Recently USP President
Randy Santucci was interviewed about an idea he had by John
Hayes of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette regarding the overpopulation
of urban deer. But in typical reporter fashion John Hayes,
knowing Randy is president of USP, wrote the article taking
advantage of an opportunity to tie it to Unified Sportsmen
of PA, incorporating a back door shot at our well known efforts
to increase the deer herd which has caused some confusion.

There is a problem with overpopulation
of urban deer. Most of the deer reside in areas where it would
be dangerous to hunt them, and in some instances the residents
are against any type of hunting. The PA Game Commission has
failed miserably on handling this issue. They blanket-ly issue
thousands of doe tags for those areas. The problem is too
many of those tags issued on the WMU level are being used
outside the urban deer problem areas. Randy's suggestion working
with PGC commissioner Hoover, was one to alleviate that over-harvesting
outside the urban problem areas, while concentrating archery
hunting in the needed areas only. As you see Randy's idea
indeed was one to increase deer numbers in hunt-able areas.

In area 2B the doe tags are never/rarely
sold out, yet the overpopulated area problem is never resolved.
A major problem is 2B is that it encompasses parts of Beaver,
Butler, Washington, and Westmoreland Counties which have rural
areas that do not have a problem with deer. With 61,000 doe
permits issued in 2B, these areas get hunted heavily which
does nothing to help the urban deer problem mostly within
Allegheny County.

Randy Santucci suggested
a plan for helping the problem with urban deer. His idea would
be a small quantity of special tags for archery hunters, based
on the area's need and size. His plan was is to allow one
buck and two doe with that tag, but the hunter would be required
to harvest one doe prior to harvesting a buck or another doe.
Those individuals would still have their buck tag available
with their regular license, and would not be permitted to
purchase a doe license anywhere else in the state. The extra
buck tag can only be used in the problem zone identified from
the tag. This extra buck tag is the carrot to bring hunters
into these areas and concentrate their hunting effort to alleviate
the deer problem. Statewide it helps because as stated, any
hunter receiving this tag forgoes applying for any other doe
tags.

As with many articles published, it
gets twisted and the PGC and their cronies use every opportunity
to make USP look bad claiming we have changed our position
regarding deer. USP is still in the front of the fight to
get the PA deer herd restored. PA was a top deer hunting state
at one time, but now we are the laughing stock of the nation
and have lost billions dollars of revenue due to DCNR and
The Pennsylvanian Game Commission’s kill the deer program.

I have seen the urban deer problem
first hand several years ago, I visited several parks in Allegheny
County and observed the over population of deer. I attempted
to get permission to hunt those areas, but was told specific
clubs had those park permits and since I was not a member
I could not hunt them. I have also talked to persons that
hunt these parks and were told they were required to harvest
a doe first and were not permitted to harvest a buck until
that doe was properly tagged and removed from the area. The
earn a buck idea has been around a long time and if incorporated
in the urban areas could help the problem.

Which it better, letting hunters harvest
a deer and use the meat promoting our sport, or sending in
sharpshooters and killing the deer which now happens in some
of these urban areas?

USP still strongly supports the deer
bills proposed on March 19, 2014 at the House Game and Fish
Committee hearing and we are fighting for the Pennsylvania
hunters to help get it restored to a top deer hunting State.